A Link in the Chain: The 'Top 15' vision

Next month will mark the one-year anniversary since the Reut Institute officially launched its socioeconomic policy team guided by the 'Top 15 Vision'. Personally, this is a milestone and a vision that came full circle.

The Top 15 Vision began with a project of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation that took place between 1997 and 1999. Representatives from many sectors of Israeli society were invited to outline scenarios for the future of the State of Israel in the year 2020.

Within this framework, Ms. Raya Strauss, one of Israel's leading industrialists, Mr. David Brodet, Former Director General of the Ministry of Finance, and I joined together to develop a scenario for Israel in the year 2020 titled "Being Among the Top 15 Most Developed Nations". This scenario was presented within the framework of the project.

A few years later, after having served in the Bureau of the Prime Minster (1999-2001), I received the Wexner Israel Fellowship and spent a year at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. I decided to devote the year to a personal project that dealt with the question of how to implement the Top 15 Vision.

Most of my courseload during that year cultivated this project. I studied a range of courses such as development economics, management of political systems and theories regarding the leadership and management of change. I devoted my spare time to consolidating these insights. I sketched them and wrote about them, 80,000 words in total.

The Vision has been on Reut's agenda of the Reut Institute since its founding in January 2004. I knew that at some point I would employ our unique methodology to the realm of Israel's socioeconomics as well. Last November, after two years and eight months, that day arrived.

To date, our team has two women and four men; 2 new immigrants (Olim Hadashim), 4 full-time analysts, one part-time and one intern. Their average profile is age 29 with a minimum of graduate degrees in a very diverse range of areas (engineering, sociology, economics and development economics, business, history and political science).
 
The team's early work focused on identifying the TOP 15 Agenda which comprises the issues most critical for leapfrogging Israel's quality of life. In recent months, most of our work has focused on strengthening Israel’s competitiveness in terms of brains, technology and investments and introducing the usage of sophisticated cross-country data that allows decision-makers to compare Israel’s performance to other countries.

We have been invited to offer our unique decision-support services to the Ministry of Finance and the National Economic Council and I believe we have been realizing our mission to offer decision-support services on topics that have been off their radar screens. I hope that we will ultimately be as successful in this sphere as we have been in the area of national security.

The Top 15 project represents a coming of a full circle. It is also a milestone in the long journey that began nearly nine years ago and will end hopefully within no later than fifteen years when Israel joins the club of the Top 15 most developed nations in the world.

Gidi Grinstein is the founder and president of the Reut Institute.